Review: Compare Image Processing Service/API Prices

October 27, 2019

I am looking for Service/API for transform (resize and crop) and optimize (reduce size) of images.

Name	Price	CDN Network
imgix	$3 per 1000 transformation	$0.08/GB
Cloudinary	Free account provide 25x1000 transformation	Or 25x1GB
Fastly Images	Free?	$0.12 - $0.28 per GB
rethumb	Free for file < 512KB	-
Filestack	Free acccount provide 1000 transformation	1GB
LibPixel	$15 for 10000 transformation	10GB
Transloadit	Free 2GB (Image input size + output size)	-
Kraken	$5 for 500MB Image	-
Image Resizer	$5 for Unlimited Transformation (with some limitations)	2GB
Uploadcare	Free 100 uploads + unlimited transformation	1GB
ImageOptim	$12 for 2000 transformation	-

Opinion

I believe the top 3 solutions are:

imgix: premium solution used by unsplash and some costing analysis.
Cloudinary: a pretty generous free tier with offer 25 monthly credits: 1 Credit equals 1000 transformations or 1GB of managed storage or 1GB of monthly viewing bandwidth.
Fastly Images: I believe there is no charge for transformation, only CDN charges. $50 free credit upon signup.

NOTE: I have yet to explore API friendliness, compression quality and CDN speed.

Open Source Image Optimization Server: Thumbor or ImageFlow
Google App Engine Images API - Support for Python 2.7/Java 8/Go 1.9 (I suspect it might be deprecated soon), get_serving_url() allows you to dynamically resize and crop images, so you don’t need to store different image sizes on the server. This method returns a URL that serves the image, and transformations to the image are encoded in this URL. This function assumes that the image doesn’t change; if it gets modified after you get the URL, you may get unexpected results from using the URL.
Cloudflare Images - require Business ($200/Month) and Enterprise Customers

By Desmond Lua

A dream boy who enjoys programming and travelling, maker of Travelopy. Follow me on @d_luaz.

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